Self Driving Cars Archives - Argyll Free Press

Who Should Self-Driving Cars Save in Case of Imminent Collisions?

June 25, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

There’s a moral dilemma regarding self-driving cars that people want to know the answer to before this new technology goes into mass production.

What does the autonomous vehicle choose when it has to decide whether to save the life of the passengers inside or the lives of the pedestrians it is about to crash into? It’s a scary thought, but according to a new survey, people want to know the answer.

Surprisingly, the majority of respondents said they do want the car to be equipped with a mechanism to reduce the number of casualties that result from a collision. If this technology is implemented, it would mean that the car will have to decide whether its passengers live or die.

The mechanism would be able to choose between crashing into a group of pedestrians – potentially killing at least some of them – and swerving off the road and crashing into a tree – potentially killing at least some of the passengers inside.

Evidently, people are scared at the thought of riding in such cars. According to study co-author Iyad Rahwan, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, self-driving technology could avoid almost 90 percent of car collisions.

The remaining 10 percent are caused by things we have little or no control over, such as bad weather conditions, random freak accidents that cannot be computed, or mechanical failures.

And this minority of accidents is where the tradeoffs get involved. Part of a serious moral debate, these scenarios have got developers thinking of possible solutions and rules for their autonomous technology.

What is the self-driving car supposed to do when a collision is unavoidable? Whether it’s the pedestrians’ or the passengers’ lives that will be saved, respondents of the survey agreed that riding in cars with a moral compass sounds dangerous.

A vast majority of them want to live in a world where cars can minimize the number of casualties, but at the same time, everyone wants their car to protect their lives, if it comes to that.

This dilemma just goes to show how paradoxical people are in nature; humans don’t really know what they want until they put themselves in the situation they’re considering.
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Honking Not Limited to Human Drivers, Google Says

June 4, 2016 By Michael Turner Leave a Comment

Just imagine this: You’re stuck in bad traffic, and some driver behind you lost its cool and is now supporting its palm on the honk even though there’s clearly nowhere to go.

You turn around to say something, but you realize there’s no one behind the wheel – the car is being annoying autonomously! With a little bit of luck, this scenario won’t happen anytime soon.

However, Google has announced the groundwork for autonomous honking is already here, as the self-driving fleet of cars has started learning how and when to honk.

The news was first spotted Business Insider in Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Monthly Report, which unveiled new data from May. In the report, Google explained that there’s no need to worry about impolite and annoying self-honking cars – in theory at least.

Apparently, the company is teaching its vehicles to be polite and considerate. “Our self-driving software is designed to recognize when honking may help alert other drivers to our presence — for example when a driver begins swerving into our lane or backing out of a blind driveway,” the report stated.

To make sure the cars won’t be honking unnecessarily, Google is programming the cars’ software to see the difference between actual honk-demanding situations and the often false positives.

During the development phase, Google’s test drivers note down every time the car toots without cause, making sure the error can be eliminated in the next version of the car’s software.

The cars have been taught more than just one type of honks, using a different one depending on the scenario: two short toots are reserved for when a car ahead is slowly reversing back into the self-driving car, but there are also longer honks that call to action in more urgent situations.

Google also released report details about the sound its self-driving cars make. Unlike gasoline-powered cars, electric cars are inherently quiet, so manufacturers had to add a sonic hum that made the car’s presence known to pedestrians and cyclists.

In Google’s own words, the sound is meant to be “friendly and a little futuristic.” Eventually, its self-driving cars will learn to predict how other drivers on the road respond to a situation-specific honk of the horn.
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Volvo Plans To Experiment with Self-driving Cars In China

April 7, 2016 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

No one knows for sure when self-driving cars will really hit the market, helping us go effortlessly wherever we need to go. This uncertainty is caused by too many unknown variables, such as the advancement of technology, regulations, and consumer acceptance.

However, none of these factors could keep Volvo from offering the public a date for the launch of its self-driving vehicle: 2020. The carmaker wants to eliminate all serious injuries and deaths caused in traffic by the end of the decade.

There’s only so much automatic braking, airbags, and other tech can do to keep us alive on the road, so Volvo plans to involve use automated driving in the equation.

As soon as next year, the company wants to verify the tech in the real world by putting 100 passengers in robocars for a pilot test in Gothenburg, Sweden. Today, April 7, 2016, Volvo announced it plans to do the same thing in China.

The Chinese road transportation system is one of the most challenging in the world, but Volvo hopes to make self-driving cars part of the solution that will make it better.

According to Erick Coelingh, Volvo’s chief of the self-driving division, the details have yet to be settled. The company is still unclear about the when or the where the China trial will begin, but it’s safe to say one of the country’s many megacities will start sporting the robocars in just a few years.

For the trial, Volvo is looking for commuters who come to the city via the highway. These people will represent Volvo’s diverse customer base, and all they have to do is stay awake and sober in the driver’s seat.

Why is the highway bit important? Because Volvo’s vehicles are not entirely autonomous yet. In Gothenburg, Sweden, the company will use XC90 hybrid SUVs, modified with the ability to handle a simple driving environment: no intersections, traffic signals, pedestrians, and cyclists.

The car will learn some new traffic behaviors, such as the ability to slide between lanes or make room for emergency vehicles. It will also be programmed to alert the human when their highway exit is coming up so they can take over.

But why was China Volvo’s next choice for the testing program? According to Coelingh, this nation is the brand’s biggest market right now, in dire need of something to fix its transportation system.

As it is, China deals with brutal air pollution, terrible congestion, and over 200,000 traffic-related deaths annually.
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New Date and Venue for Google I/O 2016

January 14, 2016 By Michael Turner Leave a Comment

Google I/O 2016 will take place between 18 and 20 May in Mountain View, California, at the Shoreline Amphitheater.

It seems we have a new date and venue for Google I/O 2016, the annual conference by Google. The event will take place between 18 and 20 May in Mountain View, California, at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Apparently, the special feature of this year will be self-driving cars that are currently in development. Car producers are quite determined in bringing the independent vehicles to the streets as soon as possible, and Google is hard at work.

Although there is no clear information on whether Google I/O will feature autonomous cars, we have a few hints pointing in this direction. First of all, the company avoided accessible and popular auditoriums like the ones in San Jose or San Francisco in favor of the Shoreline Amphitheater. The reason for this is that the venue in Mountain View has much more outdoor space including a huge parking lot. Secondly, it is very close to the Google campus, which would make transportation easier.

However, the choice of Shoreline Amphitheater also underlines the infrastructure and inequality issues of both San Jose and San Francisco, which exist in part because of tech companies. We are currently witnessing big tech firms based in smaller towns that are trying to remain suburban, while implementing larger levels of employment.

Shoreline Amphitheater can be considered an unpractical venue, because there is no public transportation leading straight to it. The closest bus station is located about half a mile from the venue, while the closest train station is at a distance of three miles. Furthermore, there are no restaurants or hotels nearby, and lodgings are quite expensive, reaching $300 per night. Apparently Google has found a solution for transportation that will consist of a series of special Google buses, the same buses that were the target of protests in both 2013 and 2014. The purpose of the manifestations was to highlight the fact that some towns do not build enough houses and apartments for the workers of corporations.

Many guests are expected to rent cars or use services like Uber, which will undoubtedly lead to traffic jams on both Shoreline Road and the 101 freeway. Furthermore, the Bay Area is a bayfront depression in the form of a bowl which can flood from heavy storms, as it happened in 1998 because of El Niño, a phenomenon that will take place this year as well.

Even though we are all excited to witness the progress of technology and these self-driving cars, the prospects of the new date and venue for Google I/O 2016 are not too bright. Let’s hope that Google will be able to properly organize and manage the conference.

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New Autonomous Cars from Renault-Nissan Alliance

January 12, 2016 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

It seems that a new producer will enter the competition of building the vehicles of the future, as there has just been an announcement about new autonomous cars from Renault-Nissan Alliance. The plan of the company is to create ten self-driving car models, which seems to be the future direction for many car manufacturers.

Renault-Nissan’s project is expected to be finished by 2020, with autonomous cars driving on the roads of the United States, Europe, China and Japan. At the moment, the company’s engineers are tuning the fine details of the automated technology, while managers are kept busy with safety concerns and regulations. The first line of self-driving cars should be ready by the end of this year, and they are expected to have the capability of steering on a highway single lane. However, the cars should be able to drive across many highway lanes by 2018. Lastly, it seems that by 2020 we could all be relaxing in autonomous cars while traveling to work through the city.

Although the fact that quite soon we will not be needing to drive ourselves comes as exciting news, Renault-Nissan Alliance is not the first company to tackle this matter. Tesla Motors has already set into motion the grand plan, and at the moment their cars are able to shift into a self-driving mode while traveling on the highways. Furthermore, some vehicles can even park themselves, and this has been achieved several years ago. Other companies that are working towards the same goal while competing with each other are General Motors, Toyota, Ford Motor, Google Inc., Lyft and Uber, and many believe that Apple Inc. might soon make a similar announcement.

But what is the purpose of self-driving cars? Many people enjoy driving, but there are many situations when this can become boring or annoying, especially when you are stuck in traffic or you have to travel a very long distance. Why not fill this time with useful or pleasant activities? Sooner than expected you will be able to spend traveling time reading, watching movies or TV series, preparing for work or school and so on.

With the introduction of new autonomous cars from Renault-Nissan Alliance, the only issue that remains is the safety of the passengers. Researchers believe that switching from automatic driving to manual control creates a perilous situation, since people become absorbed in other activities and cannot focus all of a sudden on driving. Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn declared that the transition will take place in waves, because the new technology must first be accepted, then understood and finally used.

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Lyft Gets $500 Million from General Motors

January 4, 2016 By Nancy Young Leave a Comment

Lyft gets $500 million from General Motors and joins the race for the first consumer-ready self-driving car system.

Lyft is valued at $5.5 billion due to financing from GM, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding CO., Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. and Janus Capital Management.

This is the first time a large automaker joins forces with a ride-sharing company. Considering that they are a huge threat to auto sales, as more and more urban commuters prefer to hail a ride from Uber or Lyft rather than owning a car, an alliance doesn’t seem so shocking.

With Google, Uber, Tesla and Apple heading towards autonomous vehicles, the industry is trying to adapt and reshape itself.

General Motors have announced that it would work closely with Lyft on developing a self-driving car system that would let customers order a vehicle via their smartphone, tablet or personal computer, and have said car arrive at their door step with no driver.

General Motors President Dan Ammann has said in an interview that the very first large-scale deployment of self-driving cars will be in demand on ride-sharing platforms – as in Uber and Lyft.

GM is known to have already started developing autonomous cars, and that it plans on testing a fleet of vehicles at their Detroit technical center in 2016, but there’s no news regarding on the phase of development with Lyft. Ammann has declined to comment on the status.

The fleet of vehicles will be comprised of 2017 Chevrolet Volts.

Also, GM has confirmed that their Super Cruise tech, which has been in development since 2012, will be finally available in the 2017 version of the Cadillac CT6.

In the following months, the car-manufacturer giant plans to build a series of rental-car centeres where Lyft drivers have the possibility of renting vehicles at lower, discounted prices.

Lyft had previously managed to raise about $1 billion from investors across the world including hedge-fund behemoth Carl Icahn, Middle Kingdom-based ride-hailing company Didi Kuaidi Joint Co., Tencent Holding Ltd., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., US-located Founders Fund, Coatue Management and Andreessen Horowitz.

After receiving funds from Carl Icahn, back in May of 2015, Lyft was valued at $2.5 billion.

Even though that seems to be quite huge, its direct competitor, Uber, has raised a total of about $12 billion both in equity and debt.

Uber Technologies have also managed to raise, roughly, the same funds as Uber, but the Cali-based ride-sharing company is valued at $64.6 billion – higher than even GM’s market value, which stands at $53 billion.

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Google’s Self Driving Cars Aren’t at Fault for Accidents

July 7, 2015 By Cristopher Hall Leave a Comment

Google’s self driving cars have been involved in two accidents during June of this year – humans were at fault in both of the cases. As we previously discussed earlier this year, the big G set free their self driving cars in Mountain View, California.

Google’s self driving cars are accompanied by two safety drivers on board – ready to jump and take controls if the need arises, but it seems they weren’t quick enough, and two accidents occurred due to human error. Neither of the accidents resulted in injury, they were only minor scrapes.

One of the accidents consists of a Google Lexus stopping at a red light, and the one driving behind bumped into it at 5 miles per hour. There were minor scrapes, and nobody was injured.

The second accident was even more anti-climactic. The Google car was stopped at a red light when the car behind bumped into it at 1 mile per hour – no damage occurred, not even a scrape.

Now, Google is testing their new tech in Austin, Texas. They have take all the safety measures, states a spokesperson. Permits from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Transportation, police and other authorities have been acquired by the company, but somehow, they completely forgot to announce this little experiment to the public.

Some say that Google isn’t really acting that legally when it’s about self driving cars – more so, because laws don’t exist for this kind of thing.

But why is Austin the first city where Google has decided to test their new tech? Welp, the reason behind this, according to a Google spokesperson, is that – ” We’ve loved how much Austin embraces innovation.” Or, maybe, how Austin embraces Google spending big bucks on their city.

The June report, according to Google, states that there are 2 Google Lexus self driving cars around the Mountain View area, and other 25 vehicles prepared for internal testings. Of course, we can’ really predict when the big G wants to innovate some more around the world.

Google isn’t the only one developing this kind of technology. Tesla, of course it’s Elon Musk we are talking about, has been developing their self driving cars around the same time that Google has started, but they have a fleet of only 12 autonomous vehicles.

Also, Delpi, the car manufacturer, is developing new tech regarding sensors, and soft-ware based on self-driving systems.

The future seems bright, hopefully Google isn’t going to unleash the A.I. Apocalypse on us – even Elon Musk is afraid of this, and when great minds like him suggest that we shouldn’t dwell that much in A.I. it would be best that we would heed the warning.

What about you? Do you think Google’s self-driving cars aren’t at fault? Or do you think that they are mischievously lying in their monthly reports?

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Self-Driving Cars Never Caused Accidents, Says Google!

June 9, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

Google claims that their self-driving cars were never at fault for the accidents caused. Most of them were rear endings, and others were minor scrapes.

At the moment there are about 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs driving around California, and some think that Google is just sugar-coating the accidents that involved their self-driving cars, in order to continue testing them on public roads.

John M. Simpson, who is the Privacy Project Director for US organization Consumer Watchdog, has made repeated calls that Google needs to offer complete transparency, and that the big G needs to release all of the information regarding the minor incidents – ” We now know a few more details of what happened. The problem is that it’s Google’s version and they want us to take their word for it.”

At the moment, the incidents appear to be minor, but nobody knows for sure what Google is hiding. Why not just release all of the information to the public and get rid of these false allegations? Or maybe, they aren’t false at all, and Google is hiding some nasty things under its hood. Pretty shady if you ask me.

Simpson added that – ” Google is dribbling out bits information in the hope to silence legitimate calls for full transparency. They are testing on public roads and the public has a right to know exactly what happened when something goes wrong.”

Google’s on-going self-driving cars project spans over six years, with more than 1.8 million miles driven – at least, that’s what their May 2015 report states. Their vehicles were involved in 12 minor accidents. At first glance, that’s really not bad. Six years, almost 2 million miles, and only 12 minor accidents? Well, it’s like living in a utopia were almost everyone is paying attention to the road.

Consumer Watchdog claims that these minor accidents may in fact be caused by Google’s self-driving cars stopping too sudden – ” […] the vehicles tend to stop more quickly than human drivers expect.” But let’s face it, human drivers stop too sudden all of the time. This only means that the driver that was behind didn’t keep the distance required, and wasn’t paying attention to the road. The person driving behind is almost always at fault for rear-ending.

In a recent article written by one of my collegues, we found out that Google’s self-driving cars have a maximum speed capped at 25 miles per hour. The self-driving cars are also tested near Google’s HQ in California, Mountain View – they are accompanied by safety drivers.

Only time will tell if Google is actually putting all of us in mortal danger, or if these allegations are truly based on paranoia. I’m more inclined to believe the Consumer Watchdog’s claims, rather than the big shady G.

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Self Driving Cars Will be a Thing Soon – Thanks Google

May 15, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Remember watching that Will Smith movie I, Robot – that is also based on a story by Asimov; and thinking Huh, wouldn’t it be great if self driving cars were a thing?

Well, they’ve been in tests for a while now thanks to Google, and this Summer self driving cars will make their début on the streets of California, more exactly Mountain View, where the company is based.

In a recent blog post, Google has stated that the car’s maximum speed will be capped at 25 miles, that is 40 kilometers per hour, and they will also be accompanied by safety drivers – just in case they become sentient and destroy the world, right Google?

Project director Chris Urmson says that the prototypes will run the same software as their Lexus RX450h fleet – which logged over a million miles, that is ” about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.” says Urmson.

“We’re looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle — e.g. where it should stop if it can’t stop at its exact destination due to construction or congestion. In the coming years, we’d like to run small pilot programs with our prototypes to learn what people would like to do with vehicles like this.” Chris Urmson has been reported saying.

I love the idea of self driving cars – the best way to combat drunk driving, teens, and adults alike, that can’t take their noses out of their smartphones, sudden seizures, falling asleep while driving; basically it will solve a ton of problems for us.

But are they really that safe? A recent report has found that since September Google’s self driving cars have been in 11 accidents.

Google has announced that the accidents were minor incidents, and their cars weren’t at fault. Seven vehicles were rear-ended, two of them were involved in sideswipes, and one car was involved in driving through a red light. How is the last one not your fault Google? Okay, I do understand that people were to blame for rear-ending, and sideswiping your vehicles, but passing a red light?

Pure PR Gold for Google here, because they emphasized two strong points

a) its sensors, and algorithms are far more efficient than a human driver, who is prone to error;

and

b) because the vehicles are surrounded by error prone humans, they are learning, and are far more efficient, and safe on the road. We basically feed their cars with our faults and they somehow make it better.

If we assume that what are they saying is correct, then, sheesh, that’s fantastic. A machine that learns from our errors and fixes our problems for us? Wait, no, that sounds like an introduction to the A.I. Revolution. Shut it down Google, right this minute!

But let’s put our fears and irrational paranoia aside for a moment. If what they are saying is true, then seriously Google deserves a Nobel Prize – make a category up and give it to the whole company.

One thing that the company has stated they are kinda struggling with is if, and when, the car reaches its designated stop location, and that location is blocked by either another car, congestion, or a sudden construction site that meddles with re-routing its path.

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